The overall objective of the proposed research is to study the automation requirements to improve the effectiveness of manual and partially-automated instrumentation commonly found in clinical chemistry laboratories. A microcomputer-based system will be designed and studied to meet these objectives. The system will be composed of standardized hardward and software modules for ease in interfacing to readily available spectrophotometers, photometers, fluorimeters, ion-selective electrodes, gravity-flow chromatography columns, gamma counters, etc. Studies will be made to perfect software to provide the user with a language which will make the above systems readily programmable and flexible to automate a wide variety of heretofore manual and manual-STAT methodologies. Software packages will be developed for automated quality control, instrumental status monitors, method optimization, and method evaluation schemes. The utility of the systems will be demonstrated and proven with examples from automated spectrophotometric end-point and kinetic, radioimmunoassay, ion-selective electrode and isoenzyme separation techniques.